POPULATION, PESTICIDES AND POLITICS

BY William Olkowski, PhD.

8/12/13

Can We Survive Ourselves?

Outline:

I am a biologist who specialized in the study of insects, more specifically how to control insects using other insects. Such people are called entomologists, more specifically Biological Control Specialist. Those who study and work with “pest insects” are usually called economic entomologists. I am one of a small minority within this group, called a pest management specialist.

I published a few papers on how very small insects can be controlled without pesticides. My training is rather broad, I started out as a physicist, moved over to entomology/ plant pathogy for a BS degree, later a MS degree in medical entomology, and later studied parasitology before switching to biological control.

I am a biological control specialist above all else, but my life as such was limited to only about 6 years. I consider myself a very lucky man who has a brief highly successful career using parasitic hymenoptera against a series of aphids on shade trees in the city of Berkeley, CA. That’s the knowledge I contributed to the scientific community to get my doctorate.

The four terms starting with “ps”, are all interrelated and one needs to know something about each and in combination as they affect your survival and the survival of all future human civilization(s).

The following discussion represents part of what I learned through applying the concept of Natural Control in a wide variety of settings.

I have assembled an argument for the redesign of the Toxic Substances Control Act, along with a justification based on scientific evidence about contamination of human food chains, wildlife, and the abiotic environments, called air, water and soil. A correlation between human diseases, and contamination of the human body and the air, water and soil, and foods cannot be overlooked but glares out at us to “connect the dots”.

This lecture on three interrelated subjects that provide a context for reducing toxic material uses, particularly in urban and agricultural areas, is applicable across the US, North America, and other temperate plant zones of the world in particular. By extension, I will also present a hypothetical conceptual device for sorting management program components, of potential use in designs applicable to about 50,000 pest species. That’s the estimated number of pests known from the worlds ecosystems. Further, by extension the organizing algorithm has still a greater scope of application, but will need testing and applications in still other ecosystem zones e.g., microbial organisms, fish and aquatic species.

POPULATION

A. Definition of population: an interbreeding group of organisms – the real definition of a species depends upon this definition – interbreeding is the key. If it interbreeds it’s part of a species. A mule is a product of a horse and a donkey, two different species but its sterile. So interbreeding means forever. This sort of lineage can be experimentally tested through genetic analysis for parentage.

My guess is that almost no one has actually seen all the individuals of a species unless its by accident and one is viewing the last few individuals of a species about to go extinct. Examples, abound, the Dodo bird, passenger pigeons, condors, etc. So the idea of a species is an extrapolation, from studies of populations.

Each of us is part of a population that is capable of interbreeding at all points on the earth, with every other member of any other population within our species. We humans are all more closely related genetically to each other than a human and a chimpanzee. A chimpanzee is almost identical to humans, sharing at least 95% of its genes with any human.

THE BALANCE OF NATURE

All populations are regulated by natural controls, composed of density dependent and density independent factors. The most important are the density dependent factors, all of which are other species, i.e., their natural enemies.

I call the first LAW of Nature as it iscommonly known: the Balance of Nature.

Natural Control refers to the Balance of Nature, the most important biological concept since Darwin. And it has been sneaking up on us since 1958 when the origin of species was first published.

THE BALANCE OF NATURE

DIAGRAM: THE BALANCE OF NATURE

Notes for explanation of diagram

a. If the upper limit is reached and the resource maintaining the population (could be a nutrient, plant, herbivore or carnivore) will be exploited without replacement, the population will fail. Example: the citrus industry in California was faced with this possibility when the cottony cushion scale invaded back in the early 1900s. One of the first successful biological control projects was the introduction of a ladybeetle (and a fly) which so decimated the scale that it no longer threatened the citrus industry. Previous to this great experiment the scale infested trees were being treated with cyanide filled tents, and tree mortality rates from the scale threatened the existence of the whole industry (1).

Box A. An Early Biological Control Success: Cottony Cushiony Scale, Iceryia perchasii by the Vedalia Beetle, Rodolia cardinalis, and the Fly (1).

Figure 1. Colony of cottony cushion scale.
Figure 2. The actual size of female with egg sac can be about ½ inch long.
Figure 3. Cottony cushion scale crawlers.
Figure 4. Each time a scale molts, it leaves behind its white, cottony molting skin.
Figure 5. Cottony cushion scale second-instar nymphs.
Figure 6. A third-instar nymph.

Cottony cushion scale, Icerya purchasi

b. If the lower limit is reached the population will also fail. This occurs when the individuals cannot find each other to mate or cannot find enough food to sustain themselves, or another factor so decimates the population directly by disease or deaths from various sources. We did this to many species, the classic being the Passenger pigeon. There are a large number of examples, so many in fact that the loss of species on the planet has forced many scientists to be concerned for ourselves. Estimates place the total number of species ever in existence are now mostly extinct. 90% is the estimate of the total number of species ever existing to have been eliminated. Something was killing off great numbers of species even before we started adding to the list.

c. All surviving species function between these limits, and can experience localized failure without whole species failure. Thus, the balance is sometimes considered a dynamic ever changing fluctuation around an equilibrium level. The equilibrium level is maintained as long as the environment is relatively stable. If the environment changes the equilibrium level changes. If the natural enemy factors change the equilibrium level also changes. Environment and natural enemies work in concert simultaneously to prevent herbivores from overexploiting the plant hosts.

The expected heating of the planet is an example of an expected massive environmental equilibrium level change. This can be expected to exceed the impact of even the most destructive species to ever live, which is us primates with our homes, cars and roads, factories, weapons, airplanes and airports, boats, trains and railroads, plastics, pesticides, pollution, coal and nuclear plants including weapons of mass destruction, etc.

d. This graph or diagram above of the First Law of Nature can be considered a generalized model to explain how we all function on this earth or, for a functional expectation: anywhere we may go on the planet.

C. Human population: world trends, CA trends, why CA, because its where most US food comes from.

E. Main human diseases – measures of health e.g., birth death rates. Cpd to other countries:

Conclusion: we in the U.S. are no longer the best in terms of traditional health measures like longevity, childhood death and morbidity. Japan is the leader, what are they doing that we should be doing. Other countries, e.g. Finland, Germany, etc.

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If one understands this first law of biology, then it is clear that we humans are also subject to this law. So we should expect some feedback from the environment we derive out lives from. And I think we are on the brink of doing ourselves in. Climate change and nuclear disaster are the two big expected factors which could wipe us out.

The other main natural control is what I am now calling humanicides for they are working to kill us off, very slowly for sure, but sometimes it even gets faster, but it’s a steady drain on our species. We need to remove pesticides from our bodies, and our environments. This is extremely difficult because we can’t see them, can’t smell, them, only touch them when applications are made, and for the most part don’t think about them. They are invisible. All our senses cannot really detect them except conceptual thought, the real sixth sense. Viruses are scary because we can’t see them too.

PESTICIDES – Biocides is a better term.

Whats a biocide? Cide = to kill, bio = life;

A biocide is anything that kills life or living things.

A. Rachel Carson brief history and context for creation of EPA by Nixon, and the toxic substances control act.

B. Use figures and types,

C. Studies of contamination:

1. Body burden – blood, sperm, umbilicord, fats,

2. Environmental contaminants:

water, soil, air, food

3. GMOs – the most critical poisoning process leads to permanent changes in the genetic pool. Genetic pollution is forever.

How to fix: IPM yes, but with some political teeth.

Cleaners, anti-biotic soaps, laundry soap, shampoos,

We all have herbicides, insecticides, plasticizers, heavy metals, (particularly mercury from coal burning) all this and more is stored for unknown periods and consequences in our bodies. Babies are born today with loads of poison exposures from their mothers (through umbilicord and breast milk exposures). That means widespread exposure of toxicants to genes, and body exposures even if all contaminants’ were excreted in days. There is no proof of no harm from these materials. So, those effects and now GMO crops represent an unprecedented genetic attack, all unnecessary. Some day there will be a need for a massive effort to change pest control and what we have learned about actually doing this can help point a direction away from an impending collapse. If business as usual continues we are in for some mighty big problems. And many health problems are already here from these poisons.

POLITICS

Low dose poisons are not innocuous

Traditional toxicological theory says that the dose is the poison. With this idea almost anything can be a poison if given in a high enough quantity. Although probably true in a theoretical sense, it is virtually useless as a regulatory guide because the lowest doses are not observed but extrapolated. But without really examining real situations where contamination has occurred at low doses a whole world of poisons have been cleared of any low dose effects. Its sort of regulation by neglect. The assumption of a no effect level is in error and can no longer be considered the bedrock of regulatory passage.

Low dose effects include hormonal effects, which operate in nano-gram concentrations. In general, the more powerful molecules are those which operate at the lowest levels, i.e., the hormones. Consider that a nanogram is 1/1000 of a milligram, which is 1/1000 of a gram, so a nanogram is a millionth of a gram (or 1×10^-6 g.) The sex hormones are good examples of low dose but powerful biochemicals that govern many processes, organs, and tissues.

When the Toxic Substances Control Act was ushered in by Nixon the analytic chemical tools were not available for study of such small amounts. Now, however, 40 years later, things are very different and many pesticides formally considered tolerable can no longer stand such scrutiny. This situation is so great that the exo-hormone contamination of the human body that we have large populations showing signs of natural hormone interference.

http://www.panna.org/blog/low-doses-matter-hugely-say-scientists

Time line:

events: hiroshima, presidental terms, Creation of the EPA by Nixon

Toxic Substances Control Act -Need for change

see review on blog: Body Toxic,

add info from Panna, EWG, others

Some of these obesogens are pesticides that – as the ongoing study of endocrine disruption [http://www.panna.org/blog/epa-reconsider-risk ] clarifies – can act at very low doses [ http://www.panna.org/blog/low-doses-matter-hugely-say-scientists ] to interfere with all kinds of physiological processes. This includes, it turns out, triggering increased fat cell production.Read more » [ http://www.panna.org/blog/are-chemicals-making-us-fat ]

Send to:

Biochem Pharmacol. 2010 Apr 1;79(7):939-47. Epub 2009 Nov 12.

Endocrine disruptors and thyroid hormone physiology.

Jugan ML, Levi Y, Blondeau JP.

Source

Univ Paris-Sud 11, Faculté de Pharmacie, Laboratoire Santé Publique-Environnement, 92290 Châtenay-Malabry, France. maryjugan@yahoo.fr

Abstract

Endocrine disruptors are man-made chemicals that can disrupt the synthesis, circulating levels, and peripheral action of hormones. The disruption of sex hormones was subject of intensive research, but thyroid hormone synthesis and signaling are now also recognized as important targets of endocrine disruptors. The neurological development of mammals is largely dependent on normal thyroid hormone homeostasis, and it is likely to be particularly sensitive to disruption of the thyroid axis. Here, we survey the main thyroid-disrupting chemicals, such as polychlorinated biphenyls, perchlorates, and brominated flame-retardants, that are characteristic disruptors of thyroid hormone homeostasis, and look at their suspected relationships to impaired development of the human central nervous system. The review then focuses on disrupting mechanisms known to be directly or indirectly related to the transcriptional activity of the thyroid hormone receptors.

PMID: